


Slave!St. Berry one shot

by awful_sweet



Series: A Series of St. Berry One Shots [1]
Category: Glee
Genre: F/M, St. Berry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-22
Updated: 2013-05-22
Packaged: 2017-12-12 11:57:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/811350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awful_sweet/pseuds/awful_sweet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You should really read our Slave!St. Berry RP to understand this one shot. You can find Rachel's account here: http://atrappedstar-rachelberry.tumblr.com and honestly you can just read the paras for that one if you want to catch up quickly. </p><p>However, if you're just in need of some angst to light up your day then I'll give a brief summary of the roleplay and explain the context of this one shot. </p><p>SPOILER ALERT: St. Berry were High School Sweethearts and a crazy lady kidnapped them and brainwashed Jesse into thinking Rachel was his slave. She remembered the truth and it was all very angsty. Eventually he also remembered and tried to go and get her true Jesse back for her and got himself killed while also killing the crazy lady. A scientist who worked for her took pity on Rachel and brainwashed her so she forgot her past life and woke up to the news her 'parents' were dead. She continued to live her life without remembering Jesse and married Brody and had his kid, conveniently called Jesse. This one shot is set during Jesse's first birthday after she has been brain washed to forget him. </p><p>(Part of three one shots I wrote for my Jesse on her birthday hence the birthday theme)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slave!St. Berry one shot

She wakes up knowing that today is important even as she acknowledges that she won’t know why. She never knows why. It’s as if some of her memories died along with her parents that day and now all she gets is the burn of anguished frustration as she tries to recall why today is so special… and why her skin is crawling with the itchy feeling of failure. If she knows her body, and no-one knows their body as well as does her years and years of dancing had left her finally tuned to every tweak and tickle, and she knew that the itch currently toying with her body was one distinctly related to that of gift giving. Gift giving in the Berry household had been an art form, from the age of three months Rachel had been practicing tying the perfect ribbon along with her plies and nothing had given her more anxiety than the thought of forgetting to purchase someone’s gift.  She would rather _die_. Feeling this itch therefore meant Rachel was springing off her bed and towards the calendar she had exclusively dedicated to birthdays, anniversaries and all other gift-related occasions to search for the shiny gold star she had somehow missed.

She was almost more annoyed than relieved when it wasn’t there.  Why was she so convinced this date was Rachel Berry present worthy if there wasn’t even anything happening? Barbra’s birthday had been and passed, along with Patti’s and Bernadette’s and she still had plenty of time before October rolled around and she needed to celebrate Aaron’s. With the absence of her parent’s birthdays and anniversaries, and her relative recluse life the hollow grief had forced upon her, she had admittedly had to add a few more celebrities than normally warranted her gift services to make up for the loss of such important dates.

Except _none_ of those fell on the 21 st of May.

She felt her fists rising her rub against the non-existent sleep in her eyes as if that would reveal what her body seemed to be aching to celebrate. Something that was important enough for her to feel it physically and Rachel couldn’t even _remember_.  A burning shame flamed across her cheeks as she made her way to the small bathroom attached to her bedroom. She was making it up. Her body was an artist’s body and sometimes it was just overcome with emotions that didn’t truly belong there. Perhaps it was her sixth sense picking up some ghost’s longing… Maybe her apartment was haunted. That was enough for Rachel to pause and scan the small tiled room, squealing when she caught sight of herself in the mirror.

She supposed she could pass for a ghost now, weight had dropped off her as her body mourned a loss Rachel herself had found herself strangely distant from, and now her cheeks were more hollow, her large brown eyes looked just a little too big for her face as they stared back at her haunted as if remembering some great trauma. Some great trauma Rachel’s own mind had managed to miss… whispers swirled in her ear for only a second before the familiar dull ache kicked in. Ms. July had warned her if she had to step out of one more dance class for these headaches then she was out but Rachel really couldn’t help that certain songs triggered it… How was she to know she had such an aversion to Bonnie Tyler? Anyway she could argue that it was simply discriminatory to kick someone out of a school because of a few painful migraines. Discriminatory and most definitely not going to happen, Broadway and her dreams was all Rachel had left and she was going to cling to them through Bonnie and Lionel’s entire playlists if she had to.

A hot shower was enough to wash everything away, it always was, the mindnumbing power of the water beating down on her head, washing away the half-memories she could never quite keep in her grasp... Gone. All gone. Replaced with the deep rooted certainty that she was Rachel Berry and she was fine.

And she _still_ had something to celebrate. Somehow even the water hadn’t been enough to wash away that delusion and Rachel was sure the anti-delusionary drugs her therapist had given her would prove just as useless as last time… and the time before that.  Physical labour was the only way to get through this, washing, ironing, baking, working her elliptical so hard even the machine itself was tired by the end of it.

She only realized after the icing was on that her attempt to distract through baking, her fingers kneading her frustration away on the poor cake mixture, had resulted in the creation of a beautiful birthday cake. Her brow knitting and her mouth twisting into a strange mixture of anger and frustration as she surveyed her work of culinary art. Somehow she managed to resist the urge to stomp her foot and instead quickly transferred the cake into a tin and banished it to the very back of one of her cupboards. She spent the next two hours dancing and singing along to Celine’s greatest hits and pretending not to care about yet another unsolved mystery in her life or about the deep rooted irony of her accompanying Ms. Dion in _It’s All Coming Back To Me Now_.

In the end she cracked. Rachel always cracked, and she found herself walking up that familiar block, clutching her cake tin, with only a speckle of remorse tainting the dusky scene. She always ended up here, lost, frightened, alone… This place was her place in the busy hum of the New York streets and if she was going to do something as ridiculous and blow out candles for a ghost’s birthday then she was going to do it here. The show would only just be starting so at least Rachel would be spared the sharp glances of the locals and the worried, sympathetic ones of the tourists. She paused right below the sign emblazoned St. James Theatre, ignoring the slight jab of pain that always came when the words flashed before her eyes because this time, at least, she knew the calm would come soon. The tin was placed on the floor with a clatter and Rachel bent down beside it to light the candles slowly, her palm curving around each small flame to keep it safe from the dangers of the wind and only when she was sure her little lights were safe did Rachel awkwardly move backwards a few steps still in her crouch.

“Okay, so I accept that due to my slightly supernatural abilities and deep emotional connection with most things that I would be the one chosen by a ghost to celebrate their birthday for them, however, as a stunning young ingénue I simply do not have the time to make you a cake every single year and therefore I want to stress that this is a _one time thing_.” Her gaze didn’t even flicker from the cake she was very seriously addressing. If she could make sure she was free of this feeling for even one more day than she was now then Rachel was going to demand it as strongly as her four years on debate team allowed. “I hope you have had a simply wonderful time with all your loved ones.” A small pang in her heart, almost an aftershock to a pain she had already harboured. “This song spells the end of the celebrations on this earthly plain, okay? I’m done.” Perhaps she was taking more than this day out on the ghost but she was tired and frustrated and about to serenade a cake on 44 th Street so she was sure he could take it.

Anyway, she was gifting him with her superb acapella rendition of Happy Birthday and as… _someone_ had always said Rachel’s voice was the best gift anyone could get on their birthday.

……………

He was hoping she would be there tonight, the St. James girl.  She was, after all, the absolute highlight of his jogs around the theatre district and even if she did on occasion look a little crazy wandering around outside a theatre whilst the show was going on, he was sure their meeting was meant to be. Only tonight as he was jogging down the pavement, his eyes fixed on the petite brunette hovering below the bright illuminated St. James sign, did he notice something distinctly odder going on. So odd he only just managed to swerve out of the way of a woman pushing an over-sized buggy. She was singing to a tin box, inside of which he could only see the occasional faint flicker of light. Perhaps she wasn’t quite as attractive a prospect as he thought but he had been so sure they attended the same school… beautiful Jewish girls with the voice of an angel were rare. So rare he was pretty sure there were only two in existence and the other was probably busy shopping in her underground mall.

His chances of speaking to her today were growing increasingly narrow as he found himself under the same sign as his possibly crazy crush was but instead of jogging on with the usual wink that the dazed girl wouldn’t even notice, he found himself stopping and jogging on the spot. “Hi.” He spoke just as she blew out the candles on what had turned out to be a delicious looking cake and her head snapped up to meet his gaze warily. If he didn’t know better he could have sworn the sudden movement of her hand in her pocket was her fumbling for her rape whistle.  “You do know people generally celebrate their birthdays inside, with people to share their cake, right?”

He was greeted with an imperious eye roll as the small girl finally rose up from her crouched position, her arms stretching up and out as she revelled in the new freedom for her muscles. “Yes, I am aware, thank you.” She sighed and bent down quickly again to scoop up the tin, giving him a quick flash of her panties as she did so. Super sexy. “However, I wasn’t actually celebrating my birthday but the birthday of my apartment’s ghost. We have made an agreement in which they will leave me alone if I sang them a celebratory tune and I have just carried out my half of the bargain.”

Somehow everything sounded so much saner when she explained it as if actually serenading a ghost was something everyone should do to get rid of it. “Right… But why in front of the St. James’ Theatre?” That question seemed to cut her short, a sudden look of fear flashing over her features as her mouth hung open speechless, and he suddenly regretted questioning her any further. Her recovery resulted in the short, terse answer that told a seasoned professional like himself that that was definitely the wrong course of action. “Well who doesn’t want to celebrate their birthday at the St James?”

He was weighing up her answer, trying to come up with a witty response to get the melancholy girl to smile, when he finally realized she was marching back up the street without so much as a goodbye. “Hey, wait!” He called and quickly jogged to catch up, his muscles barely flexing in their attempt to cover the distance her tiny stride had. “I’ve wanted to talk to you for a while and the cake thing was just a way to do that. I’m glad it came with such an interesting story attached.”

She had halted suddenly with his first sentence, eyeing him up cautiously while a shy smile played on her lips. “Why do you want to talk to me?” Her voice was still an authoritative demand rather than the soft tones he had heard her singing in right before their conversation had began. “Because you’re hot and I think you go to the same school as me so we already have two things in common.”

The laugh was as unexpected as it was wonderful, and the sudden gesture of her hand towards his only left him flummoxed for a moment before he was shaking the soft, warm skin, her finger twining with his for only a second before she pulled away. “Well, hello then. My name is Rachel Berry and if you attend NYADA then you are indeed correct in assuming I am the girl you’re seeing there. I’m a future star, you see, so my place there is only inevitable… and you are?”

He smiled widely at the loud babblings of the girl who only minutes before had been just as much a mystery to him as the true reason she was outside that theatre had been to Rachel. “It’s very nice to finally meet you, Rachel. I’m Brody, Brody Weston.” 


End file.
